One classic test of a successful artwork is whether it communicates well without written explanations. It's a test that the technically impressive "Album Project," by Cleveland photographer Chuck Mintz, doesn't entirely pass.

The project, on view at 1point618 Gallery in Cleveland, features 16 largely similar photographs of Isaac Mintz, the photographer's autistic son, holding Polaroid photo albums filled with photographs in which he, Isaac, has documented his life.

In each of the father's large portraits, Isaac, a boyish, slightly paunchy but utterly pleasant-looking 34-year-old, stands erect and faces the viewer directly in shorts, a T-shirt and white sneakers with white socks.

Isaac's expression changes from photo to photo, from a blank stare or a smile to an expression of surprise or the semicomatose look of someone whose eyes close involuntary when the flash goes off.

In each picture, Isaac holds one of his photo albums open at waist level. The large scale of Mintz's photographs -- most measure 64 inches high -- means that Isaac's own photos are fairly legible.

The problem here is that a viewer is left uncertain about the fundamental thrust of this project. Is it to celebrate Isaac's own involvement with photography, as revealed through the images in his Polaroid albums?

If so, the results are not satisfying, because the meaning of the son's photographs is not made manifest entirely through the brief titles written under each one by Isaac in black marker. Viewers can resort to labels next to the photographs, which explain the names of friends and relatives. But the labels don't weave a satisfyingly continuous biographical narrative to pull you from one image to the next.

It's also possible that the series is meant to document the obviously warm relationship between a father and a son who have faced significant challenges together.

Here, though, the rather cool and clinical nature of the father's portraits -- and their repetition -- tends to lower the emotional temperature.

Isaac's image in each instance is "cut out," or masked, against a pure-white background, almost as if he were a specimen on display. Because Mintz used an 8-by-10 view camera, the images are razor-sharp. Isaac almost seems to pop out of the images.

The white background tends to focus a viewer's eye on minute details of Isaac's clothing, his expressions, the photos in the albums he holds, the way Isaac switches from a green Ohio University T-shirt to a navy T-shirt from Nashville, Tenn., or a lavender T-shirt from Put-in-Bay.

The effect is startling but also somewhat harsh and unsparing. It's uncomfortably close to a kind of detached, tough love rather than an expression of affection.

There is no question that the story behind Isaac's albums is deeply moving. As Mintz explained in an interview, he bought his son a Polaroid camera when he was 15 because he thought it would help Isaac understand the spinal surgery he had to undergo to treat his scoliosis, curvature of the spine.

Sure enough, in one of the albums, we see young Isaac lying on a bed, his back to the camera, with an impressive series of sutures running up his spine. From that point, Isaac began taking photographs with what his father described as "a pretty rigid discipline" he said is typical of many with autism.

The rigid and obsessively detailed approach in Mintz's portraits of his son could be viewed, then, as a portrait of autism itself, in which medium and message coincide. Again, though, the repetitive nature of seeing all 16 images side by side tends to make the total package lean toward overkill. It might have been more powerful to show fewer images.

Mintz is obviously a serious photographer with considerable technical ability, intellect and drive. But the "Album Project," for all the energy and focus it embodies, is less than completely satisfying. It does, however, mark Mintz as a serious photographer whose work demands equally serious attention.

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